Nabil

“We were discussing a subject that was quite prominent at the time, the trend for lesbian biological mothers to use the absence of legal relationship recognition to deny custody to former female partners who had fully participated in raising a child. We were discussing the cruelty to the former partner and to the child, the vindictiveness, the destruction of the community, the endless longing and irresolution that it produces, and I asked Kendell how these women justified these actions. “It’s the cadre of friends,” she said. This insight has stayed with me ever since. There is often a “cadre” of bad friends around a person encouraging them to do things that are morally wrong, unjustified, and unethical,”
― Sarah Schulman, Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair

“This is because the caress is not a simple stroking; it is a shaping.”
― Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Novel Gazing: Queer Readings in Fiction

“He’s not so short,” said Ekaterin defensively. “He’s just . . . concentrated.” Her”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Komarr

“What’s been coming to Becca, since all this began, is this: real isn’t what they try to tell you. Time isn’t. Grown-ups hammer down all these markers, bells schedules coffee-breaks, to stake down time so you’ll start believing it’s something small and mean, something that scrapes flake after flake off of everything you love till there’s nothing left; to stake you down so you won’t lift off and fly away, somersaulting through whirlpools of months, skimming through eddies of glittering seconds, pouring handfuls of hours over your upturned face.”
― Tana French, The Secret Place